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NI'IED STATES- PATENT FFICEQ \VILLIAM H. GUILLEBAUD, OF HOBOKEN, NE\V JERSEY.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 242,414, dated May 31, 1881.

Application filed January 25, 1881.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, WILLIAM H. GUILLE- BAUD, a citizen of Switzerland, residing at Hoboken, in the county of Hudson and State of New Jersey, have invented new and useful Improvements in the Production of Photographs in Relief, of which the following is a specification.

This invention has for its object an improvement in embossed photographs, which can be produced in a rapid and comparatively cheap manner in bold rounded relief, instead of the fiat relief so far obtained.

I am aware that as early as 1860 attempts have been made to produce embossed photographs showing the principal figure in relief upon a suitable background but as yet no embossed photo-portraits have been produced, as far as I know, for the simple reason that all attempts have utterly failed to produce a better effect than that produced by the ordinary flat photographs, because all such embossed photo-portraits lack a bold rounded relief,with' clean and correct edges, and with perfectly accurate details, corresponding in every particular to the original.

My invention and process, as hereinafter described, is capable of many slight variations,

and I will proceed to explain minutely that First of all, for the purpose of taking the picture, a paper must be selected which is tough, not brittle, sized or not, and albumenized or otherwise prepared. When the paper is being cut for printing it must be out always in the same direction, for when being wet it stretches more in one direction than in the other, and if out indiscriminately some of the points would be too wide or too long, and they would no longer correspond accurately to the mold. After (No specimens.)

the pictures have been transferred to the papers, or printed, I mount them on tough cardboard; ,but great care must be taken in pastin g, otherwise the pictures, if stretched in any way, will not fit the mold. The prints may be mounted on card-board and then left to dry before embossing, or they may be placed on the mold unmounted and the card-board laid on with pastejust at the time of exposing them to the action of the embossing-die. Both ways give good results if done carefully.

I now take a negative (or positive, according to the further process which may be used) and retouch the same, so that all the dark parts of the picture, which should be raised in the mold, be reproduced, as if they had been white instead of black, and all the light parts of the picture, which should be sunk in the mold, are retouched, so as to be black, or vice versa; (for instance, dark hairs in the negative must be touched up so as to appear as they would if they had been white on the picture.) If the background is not wanted it is scraped off in the negative. Great care must be taken,however, to take the negative or positive larger than the exact size of the picture to be embossed, as will be presently more fully explained.

The negative (or positive) is taken on ground glass, either on the ground side or on the smooth side, if the glass is ground on one side only, but I prefer glass ground on both sides. A gelatine mold made by actinic action from a picture on plain transparent glass has sharp rectangular edges throughout, so that in embossin g the high white edges cut through the paper orother material to be embossed,andfor this reason such molds cannot be used successfull y for embossing. By using ground or translucent glass thelight is diffused, and the edges of the gelatine mold become slanting but in order to obtain rounded edges it is necessary to place the face of the picture at a slight distance from the sensitized medium-such as gelatine or albumen, which is to make the mold-durin g exposure. The space between the picture and the gelatine, together with the diffusing efi'ect of the ground glass, allows the diffused light to penetrate, so to say, under the edges of the figure, and a mold is obtained with beautifully slanting and rounded edges and details, and

when this mold is used for embossing a picture is obtained without cuts, cracks, or tears, and more pleasing to the eye than it it had sharp abrupt edges, if such could be produced without tearing the paper.

Afterthe negative (or positive) on the ground glass has been varnished, as usual, by flowing a very thin white varnish on its face, I interpose between its face and the sensitized gelatine a coat ofshellac or copal varnish, of greater or less thickness, or a pane or sheet of glass, mica, collodion,insoluble gelatine, or any other suitable material of the required thickness. Then I take the exposure by any of the known processes, and a mold is obtained by actinic action on the film of sensitized gelatine, which maybe of greater or less thickness, as required. From this mold I take, in the manner usually practiced, a plaster cast, which represents the figure sunk. From this plaster cast I take, by known means, a cast in beeswax, guttapercha, vegetable wax, pitch, or other equivalent material, which (when the figure in the plaster east is sunk) shows the figure in relief. This wax cast should not be more than about one-eighth of an inch in thickness.

Now, by comparing the size of the figure on the wax cast with that on the plaster cast it will be found that the former is considerably smaller than the latter, owing to the shrinkage of the warm wax in cooling and solidifying. This shrinkage amounts to a trifle less than an eighth of an inch for each five inches, but it is somewhat different for diiferentkinds of wax or different materials, and it is also affected by different temperatures, rapidity of cooling, 850. No exact rule can therefore be laid down for all cases, and the shrinkage in different cases must be determined by actual experiments.

As previously stated, the negative (or positive) must be taken larger than the actual size of the picture to be embossed, and in order to determine the exact proportion I take a wax cast on a slab of plaster-of-paris having a graduated line or scale of, say, one foot in length. YVhen cool I take off the waxcast, which shows the graduated scale. This wax scale, however, is shorter than that on the plaster-of-paris, due

to the contraction of the wax in cooling, audit serves to determine the size of the negative (or positive for instance, if the figure or picture to be embossedmeasures five inches on the wax scale, the negative (or positive) taken therefrom and serving for making the mold must measure five actual inches, or five inches on the plaster-of-paris scale.

The plaster cast from which the wax cast is obtained, as heretofore stated, being equal in size to the negative or positive from which the mold is made, is of no further use; but the wax cast will show the figure in relief and of the exact size required for embossing the print, all the details being in proper relief, not accordin g to lights and shades or colors, but according to natural position and shape, only the whole figure is flat, the natural roundness of the figure and details being lacking.

I now take an outline of the figure on tracin g-paper from the photograph print to be em bossed and paste this on a wooden tablet about three-sixteenths of an inch thick, and with a fine saw I follow the contour of the figure, producin g aframe with an opening the edges of which correspond to said contour. This wooden frame I heat on a hot iron or otherwise; then Iplace the wax cast on it, so that the edges of the opening come directly under the corresponding edges of the figure in the wax cast, (this is easily done by a simple pin-hole register or any other suitable device,) then that portion of the wax cast which projects beyond the figure is gently pressed down upon the hot wood of the frame, to which it adheres strongly, so that the wax cast can be separated from said frame only by being scraped or melted off. By these means the wax is backed with wood, leaving, however, the back of the whole figure free, and it is then fastened upon a small table with an opening at least as large as the opening in the wood frame, thus leaving the figure, which is in relief, in the wax cast fully exposed to view. The operator or artist, having both hands free, pushes up from under the wax cast to round up the whole form and he models the figure, which, by a very few touches, assumes all the roundness and shape of the natural figure, so that all the details furnished by the primitive wax cast appear on a rounded form, while the edges of said cast-remain slanting, rounded, and perfect, as produced by the actinic action of the diffused light on the sensitized gelatine. The wax cast is bent and modeled by pressure both ways, up and down, if necessary, and a skillful operator can produce a truly artistic mold in a very short time.

In order to prevent the wax mold from bein g flattened by subsequent handling I fill in the hollow space in its back by runnin g plasterof-paris in it, which is mixed with water to the consistency of thick cream, and which, after having been run in, is scraped flush with the wooden back and left to harden. The face of the wax mold is then black-leaded and expose to an electrotyping process, so as to obtain a concave electrotype, which is carefully backed on its convex side with nietal, and from which a counter-die can be taken in any suitable metal ormaterial by known means. The prints, prepared as heretofore described, are then placed between the concave clectrotype and the counter-die, and by applying pressure they are embossed.

Great care must be taken to obtain the electrotype and the counter-die of even thickness, and to place the prints on the electrotype so that they register properly, which is done by any of the numerous known ways of registering, so that the figure of the print meets the corresponding parts in the mold.

I do not here claim the process of making curved or rounded molds, dies, or matrices,

which consists in first obtaining a mold by the actinic action of light upon a sensitized medium through a photo negative or positive or other transparent or translucent picture, then obtaining a plastic cast from such mold, applying this plastic cast to aborder, frame, or backin g, and then modeling the same in the desired manner, as this forms the subject-matter of a separate application for Letters Patent filed of even date herewith.

What I claim as new, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is-

The within-described process of producing a photographic picture showing the principal figure in rounded relief, which consists in first obtaining, through the actinicaetion of light, a mold of sensitized gelatine or analogous sub- 

